She keeps losing
by SimplyUnmistakable
Summary: Tsunade have always known she is not lucky in gambling, not a bit. So it's not that surprising to see how, even when she wins a bet, she keeps losing...


"My name is Jiraiya. You can save me your love letters later!" he said that very first day, when she met him.

"Dummy..." Her eyes water at the memory and she finally breaks down, after having to hold the tears in and play strong and heartless throughout the whole day. It is a painful ache, this one, piercing her heart. And still is nothing of what she felt before. It's not the very vague, first kind of pain of such, like the one she felt the day a very innocent, young version of her, got to know that her very charismatic grandfather wouldn't ever be there again to spoil her as he had used to. It's not like the one pain she felt when her parents died, a few years after, the one pain that let her know it was time she learnt to be responsible and be a right model for her brother. It is surely not that harsh pain, which penetrated her like an arrow, at the sight of her little brother's corpse. And it is not the life-long heartbreak of having the man you love die before your eyes, which she sufferred the day Dan died. And it is not quite like the loss of her grandmother, the last truly important tie she felt she had, at that time. In conclusion, when she left Konoha, taking a young Shizune with her, she felt no pain at all, anymore, as she remembers now, not the least of nostalgia of leaving 'home', Konoha.

And, wandering the world, teaching Shizune, while wasting time and money on gambling and drinking, she never felt anything to be wrong and she surely wasn't looking for anything more than that.

But then, many years into this meaningless, wasteful life, the damn perverted loser comes back into her life and, somehow, he brings with him the remniscience of everything she once left behind. He talks about the position of Kage and she doesn't know whether it's the man even thinking to come with such kind of proposal to her or the confidence he seems to bear, concerning her approval, that makes her se the situation so ironically, deeply amusement. That child he brought, she finds pitiful. But she stays aware. Because, funny or not, she knows Jirayia. He is sneatchy and witty, she got to know through the years. If he wants something, he manages to have it. Anything. Well, not anything, though. SHE was never his, though she knows he wanted her badly. He might still do. She is still the young, charming one she was, after all. And Tsunade shamelessly gets use of this.

She invites him for a drink. Puts in one of her special drugs when he's not looking. As soon as he's passed out, she sneaks from there.

She meets Orochimaru, another one she could have much easier continued without. She does not accept Dan and Nawaki, however. She does not need anything from the past, thank you very much. But, as much as she can't really care less about Konoha, thinking it would possibly be destroyed makes her feel this sort of uneasiness, no matter how much she previously tried to deny it and ignore it. And little does she knows, that's only the beginning. It does not really take much until she realizes, Naruto is the good card Jirayia was so confident about. The boy is Nawaki and Dan, Senju Hashirama and Uzumaki. He is the Will of Fire. He is Konoha.

Tsunade loses yet another bet, and she loses it to that 'pitiful child'. Strange, she's not even mad about it. It's the first bet ever she was sure to win, yet the first bet ever she is content to lose.

* * *

"You should bet I'll die," is what he said. "Then, I'll surely come back," he teased her that day.

Tsunade have always known she is not lucky in gambling, not a bit. So it's not that surprising to see how, even when she wins a bet, she keeps losing...

So what does she lose today, in the end? She lists all the heart aches she have had so far, but this one does not seem to fit in any category. Jiraiya was not her father, brother or lover, barely her friend. In their younger times, she did not hear a single serious thought from him. She did not hear a single consoling word from him, when Nawaki died. He always kept flirting, but never made her a serious declaration. But people tendedvto say, more or less serious, 'The fool has to be in love'. When Dan died, he merely avoided her. When she left the village, he did not say a word against it.

People tend to think that Jiraiya was the easiest kind of person to read. The truth is, that's far from the truth. Jiraiya was the most enigmatic person one could ever be known.

* * *

**A/N:** _This is a one-shot I had had in mind a lot of time ago, just a while after Jiraiya's death. But I abandoned the idea and just got back to it after Hashirama mentioned in 619 that he was the one who had introduced Tsunade to gambling. So, as it's late at night and I wanted to write something, but had no inspiration for my current stories, I said, "Let us give this a try!"_


End file.
